'Bird Box 2' Is Still Possible, Even Without Source Material

Director Susanne Bier seemingly hasn't ruled it out.

The Bird Box apocalypse might not be over, because the film’s director hasn’t ruled out a direct sequel just yet. Even if there isn’t a book to base it off, we could still see a Bird Box 2 release date on Netflix eventually.

People magazine published an interview with Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier Friday, and when asked about a potential follow-up to the apocalyptic horror film starring Sandra Bullock, Bier was content to bask in Bird Box’s success. But she didn’t rule out a sequel by any means.

“We only just finished it!” Bier said. “It’s funny, I’m kind of reading people asking for a sequel and I’m like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, we really just finished!’ So let’s just enjoy it for now.”

So far, plenty of people do seem to be doing just that. Despite getting ravaged by reviews from film critics who generally called Bird Box a poorly-formed fusion of The Happening and A Quiet Place, the film went on to become Netflix’s most-watched original release ever, according to the company’s own opaque metrics. More than 45 million different Netflix accounts watched it in the first week.

That basically necessitates a sequel, right?

Took off my blindfold this morning to discover that 45,037,125 Netflix accounts have already watched Bird Box — best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film! pic.twitter.com/uorU3cSzHR

“It’s almost unbelievable, I have to remind myself that it’s real because it’s so insanely huge,” Bier said. “It’s almost like a phenomenon. I don’t think any of us really anticipated it.”

Bird Box is based on the novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, and stars Sandra Bullock as Malorie. She’s pregnant when the apocalypse comes in the form of an invisible supernatural threat that assumes the form of a person’s greatest fear. Looking directly at the “creatures” is enough to force almost anyone to kill themselves immediately. So to survive, everyone has to cover their windows and wear blindfolds whenever they venture outside.

Like the book, the film takes place in multiple time periods. Malorie travels down a river with two children aptly named Boy and Girl, but flashbacks show us what occurred immediately after the monsters arrived. By the end, the movie has filled in all the gaps between those two timelines, but a sequel explore other people and areas of the world (kind of like the Cloverfield series) or simply pick up directly after the end of Bird Box?

Either way, there’s no written source material to follow, so Bird Box 2 would have to explore new territory akin to The Handmaid’s Tale or Big Little Lies. Then again, maybe like with Handmaid’s Tale, the success of this streaming adaptation will spur the original author to write a sequel of their own.